What You Should Know About Investing At Every Age From 16 to 60

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I was chatting with someone at a meetup here in Salt Lake City about finance and the subject of age came up. They were young – still in college and already way ahead of where I was at that time. Looking at the numbers from the Interactive Guide, they’re not alone! The group in the “college millennial” age has potential to be the easiest retirees ever – if they can start young, control spending and save aggressively.

That got me wondering:

What do I wish I had known at each age?

That’s the goal of this post – sharing what I wish I had known. Although these have ages associated with them here, it’s more for ordering purposes. If you understand one thing on the list, just move onto the next one – even if it’s beyond your years.

This is also completely opinionated based on my knowledge of investing. I strongly prefer and advocate diversified, low-fee, index fund investing, which this focuses on. If you already know up to your current age, don’t stop there! Keep learning other topics. In other words, don’t wait to learn!

This list is limited by my own knowledge of topics in the investing world. I started investing when I was 24 (I’m 36 now) and have made plenty of mistakes. I’ve been reading about financial independence and optimizing it since reading The Bogleheads Guide to Investing in 2010 and finding Mr. Money Mustache in 2012. In that time, the community has grown from a small corner of the internet to a worldwide phenomenon!

But, for someone starting today, there’s almost a decade of blog posts. Outside the web, there’s even more books and other studies on the topic. This list is my attempt to hit on the main topics as it relates to the how of getting to financial independence.

With that in mind, here are 44 things you should consider looking into if you want to be financially independent or retire early.

I don’t believe the average person pursuing financial independence will need to know these topics. The time I spent learning these topics ended up being fun, but a distraction from the time that could have been spent elsewhere.

My personal path to building wealth has been one of relentless optimization. The focus has been on reading to understand small tweaks to my own strategy that could pay off big – most in the form of time later.

If you’re just getting starting today, and want to learn the basics of investing, I’d recommend checking out my free minimal investor course. We touch on a number of the investing related topics on this list in a well-defined order that builds on each other.

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If you’re just getting into investing or the idea of financial independence, this list will seem intimidating. That’s OK! Treat it like a book. You don’t need to learn everything today. As I mentioned before, I learned these topics over 12 years. Some of them may not be relevant to your path to wealth either. My path was very much driven by index fund investing. If you’re taking the side hustle or real estate path, you’ll have a whole different set of things to focus on that I don’t have personal experience with.

What else should be on this list that isn’t? What are the greatest articles you’ve read on investing or FI that shaped how you think?

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Comments (4)

Hey Bunmi! I’m not too familiar with them actually. I’ve read their stuff over the years, and it tends to be more about maximizing returns while taking on higher risk. I’m not sure if that’s their advisor strategy, but it would be something to watch for.

I recommend trying them out advisors as a “fee only” style advisor if possible. That would allow you to talk with them, understand what they want to do with your money and how they can help. Laying out that plan in how you work together can be very useful.

Ohh yeah, good point. The topics from it could work for investors anywhere, but there are a few specific weeks that focus on US-only things. The main ones would be:

Week 4: Tax-efficient fund placement
Week 8: Tax implications

The different account types we have here in the US (401k, IRA, Roth IRA) are very specific for solving US tax problems. Depending on your country, there may be different similar account types or strategies to use, but unfortunately, I’m not an expert in those.